Friday 20 February 2004, 6 pm ABC1

Tommy

Black Tracker is a 1990s ABC documentry about the late police officer and tracker Sergeant Riley produced by the late Michael Riley. At its wrap up there is a beautiful piece of classsical music which then lasts throughout the creidts. The name of the music is not in the credits. ...

Tom E. Lewis’ appearance in the Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith was his first film. He was ‘discovered’ at Tullamarine airport, Melbourne, by Rhonda Schepisi, on his way back to Darwin where he planned to work as a motor mechanic. It was her husband Fred who was to direct this film adapted from Tom Keneally’s novel, the story of Jimmy Governor.

Transcript

Even though Blacksmith was Australia’s first film to compete at the Cannes Film Festival, it didn’t live up to the huge media hype which preceded it. After this, Tom was reluctant to continue as a actor and due to the criticism, he turned down a number of roles. However, two years later, in 1980 he was on the set of the mini-series ‘A Town like Alice’ joining Helen Morse and Bryan Brown in Broken Hill. Parts in other films followed including ‘We of the Never Never’ 1982, ‘The Life of Harry Dare’ in 1994. And in television, the 1985 production of ‘Robbery under Arms’, ‘Kangaroo Palace’ and others.

Born in Moore River in 1957, Thomas Elmore Lewis lives in Beswick with his wife Fleur and their family. Tom is an artist, musician – didgeridoo, guitar & winds -and loves to fish.

This is a story about life after Blacksmith, and the challenges faced by Tom and Fleur in Beswick.

The Music Clip this week is George Rrurrambu and band singing “Blackfella, Whitefella”

Transcript of Tommy

RACHAEL MAZA: Hello. And welcome to Message Stick. I'm Rachael Maza. Tommy Lewis's acting career led him to international acclaim and back again. The role that made him known to Australia, 'The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith', took a young, inexperienced Tommy into a world he wasn't ready for. And today, his stage is the community of Beswick.

TOMMY LEWIS, ACTOR: My skin name, my moiety group Dhuwa, me a Balang. That's my skin name. My Aboriginal name, Bungarl, from Murrungun people. Morning star - Burnumbirr Thumbul. Murrungun Thumbul Bungarl. You either got to be Dhuwa or Yirritja. They're fire people, crocodile dreaming, baru, where us mob, we're shark and morning star. And through that, we have king brown snake. So everything is connected to the country. This tree, this wind, that fly. This fly here. Jiggy-jiggy, yeah? (Laughs) Murra-murra, him come. Even this ground. (Speaks Aboriginal language) And...that water. Even them rocks. Everything has a meaning for me.

I got an opportunity once in a lifetime to... I never thought I'd... get to how...where I got to. Like a big whole circle sometimes or the circle breaks off and goes somewhere else. Something happens. Um, but being in Melbourne... Someone...someone came and they said, "Do you want to do this?" And I knocked it back first. I didn't know...because I didn't know anything about, um...television or anything, yeah? I thought all the stuff came from America. I still do, now you learn about it. But we watched David Gulpilil, yeah? Gulpilil in 'Walkabout' when I were in college. And for us, that was like, "Wow!"

I didn't know what I was going...going into. I didn't know what was it about, where they're going to take you, what they're going to do. But all of a sudden, there was a big transition. Somehow, you've got to learn how to swim. And that's the journey where a lot of you and me, people, when they get involved in the film industry, they got to float down that river but that journey going to get rougher because nobody's standing on the banks to pick them out or they're not putting their hands up to be picked up. They need to flow more further, maybe, you know.

I've learned to be with people. But still I was naive and insecure. Ruth Cracknell, Helen Morse - these are the people who are my teachers. Hargreaves. John Jarratt. I got family in the industry down that way, yeah? In Melbourne. When you learn theatre, it teaches you to be brave. It teaches you to talk and understand and communicate with people. Once you hit the stage, it becomes like a womb. The safest place on earth is the stage, not in the head. You think, "Oh, you're going to vomit, you're nervous, you're going to nearly pee yourself." But you can do all that on the stage and nobody don't care, yeah? It's a safe ground.

Well, to think that I saw cultures, to be famous. Yeah? They blame you. My own brothers down the Roper would say, "Hey, you traitor!" I tell you, brother, you can't gammon-gammon. "Oh, I'm doing this for the film. You know, I'm a pretty Aborigine, you know." You can't do that. Law first. And never sell any women's secret stuff. And people have already done it, you know. The...even blackfellas themselves have to look at themself. Look. What is the writing? Not gold. Just because you're in a film, to do a...a sacred Aboriginal thing? But at the same time too, the Australian film industry have to be careful of what they're doing in dealing with Aboriginal culture. You know, you can't just go around and do things anymore. I will not do anything anymore that...that...that would...inspire my family to call me a traitor. Yeah? No more. And I believe in my culture. I worship my culture. I live in it. I belong to it. I'll dance in it. I'll put my paint on.

The bush is a wilderness for me. I can live here. I've learnt that when I was a kid. I've learnt ceremonies, I've learnt dances and songs and all the things that are important for me now. You have to be part of the old people and stay by them because they stood by you. No matter what they say, our old people, they stay by us.

After I finished 'Jimmie Blacksmith', I've come up here to Beswick in my little red Celica. And when I came here, a lot of people didn't like it. We had to deal with a lot of things, yeah? And one of them is dealing with the policeman. One morning, this policeman come up with his shorts in the policeman Toyota, but no uniform. And he come up and he says, "Hey! You're not an Aborigine. You're not a blackfella. You should get out of this community." I said, "Do you know anything about where I come from? Because if you say that in front of my family, they'll... (Speaks Aboriginal language) ..they'll tell you off." While he was talking to me, that Old Victor, he was come walking up the road. And that policeman turned around to him and said, "Old Victor, this bloke's not an Aborigine, isn't he?" And he looked at him and he said, "That's my son." And he went like that. "That boy is my son. You leave him alone."

The lowest point in my life is when I used to drink. Alcohol really crippled me up...inside. I was drinking whisky and beer and everything. And then I went outside and I conked out in a little laneway. And a car missed me, my head, about that much. It splashed water in my face. And my spirits were looking at me maybe that night. I got up and I looked at the wall. Arnhem Land, too far away, do you know?

Well, I'm never alone. I've always got spirits, yeah? That eagle would fly down and get a fish - dooff! You got a fish? (Speaks Aboriginal language) Yeah? And hear spirits all along from old people. I talk to them. I too need to set my foot right. So today my brother is here. Um... My big brother, I go speak to him. You know, I... But when you sit down here, you meditate, you sing and you ask the old people, "I'm going right way?" So you're never alone. They're always around you, everywhere, yeah. You talk to your father, you talk to your grandmother, you can talk to your uncles - everybody in the other world - to guide you.

We...we worship things differently than the whitefella in his church. Because this is our church. This is the way you're supposed to pray. Pray!

It should have been Vincent Lingiari giving Gough Whitlam the sand, hey? "You're standing on my ground, you know," as they would tell us. Not Gough go and give him - "Here, I'll give your land back." They'd tell him liar. Forget about the whitefella bureaucrat because you and my own mob are going mad as they are. Our leaders in this country, they need to go back and sit down in the bush or learn things properly to do things the Aboriginal way. We're tired of having to deal with... Nobody don't see the red tape bounding an Aboriginal community. And they blame us for it! We don't put no laws up. And we live...we live by our law.

Our sons and daughters hit the age of 16, 17, they get married. We all done the same, all of us. That's for us, that maturity age. And that's...when you're in line of marriage, nobody speak, that's yours. You follow the track. It's not about under-age wife. It's about the law. You respect that. We give marriage. It's not us giving marriage to our sister. We give... We say that. We give fire. We...we have fire. (Speaks Aboriginal language) And we have the fire there with our sister's place. We can't go at our sister and brother-in-law's home. That's the law.

(TOMMY DRIVES PAST HOUSES IN BESWICK)

Over here is my brother-in-law, this stretch. All my in-laws. From that house back there right up to here. Hello, sister!

Well, we go there when we're hungry because brother-in-law, he likes going hunting. (Laughs) And he's got all the licence for the rifle. So he's the main hunter in the community, yeah? So we have to go there for meat.

We're not segregated by sexism. We're segregated by law. And if you lose that law, well, there's no songs. When there's no songs, there's no country. There's no spirit. And we walk anywhere, you know, like feral animals. And we don't want to be like feral animals because there's kangaroos here. It need these songs. We've got barramundi here. It need a song, yeah? And we need to look after the place. The Mimis don't come out no more because too many green cans around everywhere.

It's good to learn about whitefellas' way. It really is. You have to learn how to drive a motor car. You have to learn how to fix it. It's good to look at what happening around Europe and every other place and television. But still you have to sit and do your own song and your own story. It's good you can have vegemite and white bread on your table. You still got to eat goanna.

You know, goanna - you know, all the cane toads come and eat them all. We're going to sue the Queensland Government for bringing cane toads into Australia one day. If you want to talk about justice... Law, you see. They discriminate on people's food. We don't go poisoning their cows. We used to spear them. (Laughs)

Now we joke about it - we have to have new totems. We have to have pigs, donkeys, nanny-goats. Buffaloes. Cane toads. And more cane toads. When you're dancing the ceremony, yeah, we won't dance the Australian animal. We'll dance all those feral animals, you know. I, uh... True! That old fella were telling me, yeah? That's what we'll be dancing next. "What your dreaming?" "My dreaming is the donkey. Hee-haw!"

TREVOR, RADIO DJ: That was 'Shelter Me' with Joe Cocker. Yo, you're listening to 106.1 FM, Beswick BRACS. Wherever you are, Tommy, this request, it's going out to you. You can drive with it in your Toyota.

(SOULFUL MUSIC PLAYS ON THE RADIO)

We have a great time in Beswick. (Laughs) We all work for CDEP. Today's payday. And they all get about 150 each. That's working for the dole. But we have fun. You know, we got BRACS there. We got our little shop. Broadcasting in remote Aboriginal communities. Yeah. And we have a 12km radius which we're trying to spread out a little bit. We use that as our propaganda machine. (Laughs)

Trevor is a Balang, like me. He's been training at Batchelor. And last year, the community made me in charge of BRACS. So we're trying to write programs and set up programs. We'd just started off with programs and...and...tried training our young people. A lot of our people have difficulties in reading and...and mathematics. And, um... We never wrote in the sand with mathematics. Um... But when you do things and blackfella watch you to do it, that's how we learn, you know. Like, that's our schooling. You can be fiddling with things and they watch you and they go and do the same thing, right? But, um, everything has a default if you're learning in that way. We're trying to tell our kids that reading and mathematics is...is important in our lives. Get a little bit, you know. Reading is important for all our people these days. And we ask all our...everybody to go to school, you know.

FLEUR, TOMMY'S PARTNER: He's a lovely dad. But our...our relationship, he and I with Grace, it's like our professional relationship and it's like our personal relationship. I'm behind the scenes and he's the frontman, you know. He's the PR man with Grace all around the village. I'm in there - nappies, milk, washing. You know, thinking like that about everything. So...but he's a lovely dad. He's really patient with her and all the times that I lost the plot, he was there to take over and...

I love watching him with her. It kind of makes you fall more in love with a person, seeing them with their baby.

TOMMY LEWIS: I had another chance. Fleur gave me another chance. I saw my baby born. I've actually been in the maternity ward to see my daughter and hold her in my hand. That's the highest point. Yeah? And that's precious. Yeah? "And cut the umbilical cord for you, baby?" Yeah. We were covered with water. See? That's precious. And that's the...thing you get for sober. And people listen to you. You...you can do things. I can do things for social security for my family and people.

FLEUR: It was interesting coming here and seeing him in his home - home or cultural context. Really different. I sort of understood him. For the first time, you know, he kind of made sense. I went, "Ah, I get it now!" You know. Because things you don't realise when you meet someone in the city. You wouldn't necessarily know that they're a person with ceremony and songs and...and quite a lot of traditional stuff.

(FOOTAGE OF CORROBOREE)

TOMMY LEWIS: The festival name here is called 'Walking with Spirits'. 'Walking with Spirits' is something based on bringing our mob. Even in the community, the fires are spread. To do anything, you have to bring the families back to our songs and stories and dances.

Lucky for some old people, they said, "No, I got a strong head. My ceremony must go on." One of them was my grandfather. And lucky, today, Roper is still strong with our songs and our marrying and our culture. Imagine all of the...all of the old people didn't do anything about the songs and dances from before. Where would we be now? Right now! The communities that have their corroborees and their songs and their dances...they're strong. You know, they can sing and they can dance. And if you can sing and dance, your whole... Your dreaming, you know...your dreaming is important.

My mob come from the Roper when I was known as a little mununga boy and a little whitefella because my father sent money and clothing to me. And...but I knew about him around the camp fire in the village. I grew up knowing about this phantom.

They used to tell us, "Oh, the welfare people are coming." Let them come. My mother and my grandmother were strong. And my father, my real father, old Hurtle Lewis.

In the whole round of things, I was lucky to be looked after well, yeah? I have this family. But I was brought up with this lot and I stay here and I belong to this lot. I belong to this region. If you want to do things for your culture, you've got to revert back to the ground. Just showing your family and people that you have to be strong and worth it to be standing, sitting on this ground and talk on top of it.

RACHAEL MAZA: And the clip we bring you this week is from George Rrurrambu singing 'Blackfella/Whitefella'. And if you want more information on any of the programs, check out the Message Stick site on abc.net.au/message. And I'll see you next week.

(GEORGE RRURRAMBU AND BAND PLAY BEFORE AN APPRECIATIVE STUDIO AUDIENCE)